DC voters will decide whether to ban the sale of foie gras in November’s election. The DC Board of Elections has officially certified Initiative 86—“Prohibiting Force-Feeding of Birds Act”—which was pushed by an animal welfare group called Pro-Animal Future.
If passed, retailers and restaurants that serve foie gras could be fined $1,000 to $5,000 per violation and risk having their business license suspended for repeat offenses. The measure would focus on commercial sales, but individuals could still have foie gras for personal consumption. The act would also ban foie gras farms from operating in DC, though none currently exist. If successful, it would take effect July 1, 2027.
Pro-Animal says its team of 198 petition-circulators collected 45,000 signatures in 14 weeks—beyond the 28,728 valid signatures required to quality for the ballot across a wide swath of DC wards. Pro-Animal media and content lead Natalie Fulton says the group is feeling pretty good about its chances in November, citing a public-opinion poll commissioned by DC Voters for Animals that found 78 percent of DC voters support a foie gras ban.
“A lot of people don’t know what foie gras is. But once they find out that it’s made by force-feeding ducks with a metal tube, they generally don’t support foie gras,” Fulton says. She pushes back on the argument that a foie gras ban is too niche: “Just because it’s a niche product doesn’t mean that we should accept this form of animal cruelty. The government already regulates horse meat. And you could say shark fin soup isn’t a huge issue, it’s just a niche product. But that doesn’t mean that restaurants in DC should be selling it.”
DC has more restaurants serving foie gras than any other US city except New York City and Las Vegas, according to a recent report from Colorado State University’s Animal-Human Policy Center. That same report confirmed only 17 restaurants serving the luxury ingredient, but Fulton says they found it listed on menus of nearly 50 DC dining spots, though many only offer it seasonally.
“I don’t know a single chef who’s excited that foie gras is being banned,” says Butterworth’s chef Bart Hutchins, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of the initiative and recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about why he’s proud to serve foie gras. “There’s a certain cowardice in the chef’s community that’s afraid to speak out about it. And there’s part of me that doesn’t blame them because the vitriol that I’ve gotten for it.”
Anti-foie groups have previously held protests—with megaphones and graphic images of force-fed birds— in front of a number of DC restaurants. The animal rights activists say the birds develop liver disease, organ failure, and other issues from the force-feeding process, which they call inhumane and unethical.
Hutchins counters that the two farms that produce the vast majority of foie gras in the US “have incredibly high standards” and “do an incredible job” of raising their ducks. “The ridiculousness of going after these two producers as opposed to the bajillion producers of factory-farm pigs and factory-farm chickens is silly. It just makes no sense to me,” he says.
Hutchins says he plans to still serve foie gras regardless of a ban. “I’m not going to bend to these people,” he says. “[Famed DC chef] Jean-Louis Palladin was serving foie gras when it was illegal to serve. He was doing that at the Watergate, one mile from the White House. The chefs are going to find a way, because we care about this more than the meme politics people do.”
Another DC chef, who requested anonymity for fear of backlash, says he currently serves foie gras off-menu. “We serve duck leg, we serve duck breast, we sell duck neck sometimes. We use all the parts of the animal. As a French restaurant, we need to have foie gras. I mean, it’s difficult not to have foie gras,” he says.
The chef says he will also likely continue serving foie gras even with a ban, and he thinks other restaurants will too. He says even though foie gras is banned in California, he’s eaten at restaurants there that still serve it.
“Who’s going to do the enforcement, by the way?” he says. “They don’t have enough inspectors to do a health inspection. Some restaurants, they are chaotic and dirty. They don’t even know how to clean the city of the rats. And they want to clean from something that we eat that is very good?”
Foie gras is already banned for commercial sale across California, plus in places like Pittsburgh, Brookline (a suburb of Boston), and recently, Portland, Oregon. A legal fight over a foie gras ban in New York City has lingered on for years, while Chicago once overturned its ban. A similar initiative is on the ballot in Denver this fall as well.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
